Trinity Mirror Launches Showbusiness Website
Trinity Mirror launched its latest online venture, an entertainment news site called icshowbiz.com on Friday, as part of its planned £50m new media investment for this year (see Newsline).
The site, aiming to be the largest of its kind in Europe, will draw in articles from the Trinity Mirror stable of over 170 newspapers including the Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Daily Record. Features of the site will include news, views, gossip and reviews, as well as behind the scenes stories on music, film, TV, video and radio. It will have seamless navigation with other sites forming part of the ic24 portal and ISP. A live news feed will come from Hollywood, contributors will include the 3am Girls and Charlie Catchpole’s TV reviews and soap round-up and a database will feature a back catalogue of celebrity interviews.
David Clarke, managing director of Trinity Mirror Digital, which runs the ic24 sites said, “We have spent the past nine months building a new core platform that gives us state of the art on-line publishing capabilities. We can also easily add on new technologies as and when they come to market. This will allow us to evolve with the developing industry and continually keep ahead of the competition in areas such as mobile and interactive TV content development.” He went on to say that they expected the site to show profit within three years.
The launch of the site coincides with Richard Desmond’s recent buy-out of the Express Newspaper group (see Newsline), which includes the red top rival to the Mirror, the Star. It is thought that he is to bring his own “star experience”, as owner of celebrity magazine OK, to bear on his new acquisitions, feeding showbusiness stories from the magazine to the newspaper titles. With newspaper circulation decreasing (see National Newspaper NRS Round-Up – October 2000), it appears that showbusiness news could be the new battleground for readers.
Trinity Mirror Digital: 020 7643 3333
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